HUNTSVILLE, Ala. -- "Washing Machine Charlie" was putt-putt-puttering around overhead. That's what George Korkisch and his fellow soldiers stationed on New Guinea called the Japanese plane that visited most days.

The plane would "just pop along, and it sounded like a washing machine." A bomb would drop harmlessly somewhere, as if the pilot were saying, "Look, I've got orders. But if I'm not really attacking you, you won't shoot at me, right?"

Korkisch was lying in a field hospital when a stuffy, distinguished general arrived to award him and others a Purple Heart. Korkisch had been struck in his chest by a shell fragment, which barely missed his heart.

"Well, all of a sudden, Washing Machine Charlie came over," Korkisch said. "The general headed for the slit trench. He didn't know if the bomb was going to hit or not."

The wounded soldiers couldn't move. But there went the general, diving into a messy trench dug for drainage and more personal, unsanitary reasons.

This anecdote, which you could imagine from some war-related sitcom, sat undisturbed in George Korkisch's memory bank for years.

"I didn't want to remember," said the 91-year-old Korkisch. "There were too many sad deals, friends that were hurt and killed."

Not long ago, Drew Battle started drawing some of those memories out. Said Battle, "I didn't know the veteran's side until a year or so ago." He is the godson of Korkisch and his late wife, Bonnie. He even has the sliver of metal taken from Korkisch's chest.

What Battle did is a reminder to a lot of godchildren, grandchildren and grown children. Stop and ask some questions of our World War II generation. Hear the stories before it's too late.

Korkisch was stationed in Nevada when Gen. George Patton was there with his unit. He saw Patton shooting rattlesnakes with his revolver and said that - drum roll here - "he was almost as hard on his men."

Proving the Army wasn't always a well-oiled machine, Korkisch's outfit was dispatched to Alaska, equipped with thick, wool uniforms to fight the cold. En route, their orders changed. They were sent to Hawaii instead - with nothing but wool uniforms.

After being wounded, Corporal Korkisch was put in charge of conducting close-order drills in the field hospital.

"The nurses were all right," he said. "The doctors wouldn't listen to us."

He still has a snapshot of a New Guinea native named Jake - barechested, wearing beads and sporting a volleyball-sized Afro. Jake had been trained as a policeman in Australia and would lead Allied troops to Japanese outposts on the island.

The support of natives like Jake has Korkisch fretting for today's soldiers.

"We knew who we were fighting against. We knew every bit of what we were there for and who we were fighting," he said. "These guys now don't know that. I don't think the guys fighting in Afghanistan have a fair shot. Every time I pick up the newspaper, the poor guys, they're getting shot at the by the same people that are serving them during the day."

Korkisch appreciates that his "Greatest Generation" has received great tribute through the years but bemoans it hasn't always been awarded to younger veterans.

"I want (people) to remember we were fighting for them. I want them to think of the guys there fighting now," he said.

This is a day we wrap ourselves in red, white and blue and occasionally pause between bottle rockets and babybacks to wax a little patriotic.

Such holidays are as comfortable to Korkisch as, well, those old, wool uniforms.

"We didn't even feel like we wanted to get mixed up with (military remembrances). People would say, 'We're glad you made it' and all that. So what? A lot of them didn't make it. Some people build up a big deal of parades and things like that. I don't know why, but I didn't care so much about that."

Let's always celebrate men like George Korkisch. Let's embrace the memories we urge them to share. And let's never fail to understand that not all is celebratory when it comes to what they carry with them, too often unheard, decades later.